Editorials

...This prediction of at least a temporary fast bail-out seems to be borne out by recent events indicating that some sort of rescue operation is underway...

...And for a world banking structure (your neighborhood banker included) that is gnawed by uncertainty...

...But such an interview is not the sort of thing an emissary does if he wants to keep his portfolio...

...It's a persuasive method, and the Indians, choosing survival over suicide, have measur-ably withdrawn support from the guerrillas...

...That was not the kind of news Washington, eager to recertify war-weary Salvador at the end of this month, wanted to hear - that is, wanted the U. S. Congress to hear...

...Did you get that, Mr...

...morality...

...Yet on the political fronts of both sets of rebels sit the remnants of the moderate Christian Democrat parties of both countries...

...Does Guatemala need American aid for its "scorched Communist" policy...

...government exercised proper supervision in this regard...

...Mexico's current inability tokeep up with its $80 billion foreign debt is a striking warning of what could be a widespread international economic crisis...

...No United States admin-istration could tolerate the idea of a massive Latin American default and the consequent national and international financial panic, they say-at least no U.S...

...it's a lot harder to write off a whopping $61 billion...

...Yet we ought to ask ourselves whom we are fighting in Central America...

...Green Beret, Cap-tain Jesse Garcia...

...This step would take some doing, and the Latin Americans may not be able to bring it off...

...We don't care - we're still against Communism.- we're still against Communism...

...Reagan's hard-line strategy in Central America, argues that Rios Montt only needs it in order to gain international moral credit...

...Foreign debts represent borrowing abroad by the government and by private investors...

...administration with good sense...

...Such a union would use the very size of their outstanding loans-and the danger possible default involves for the international economy-to negotiate more equitable arrangements for trade and aid...

...Reagan's affable largess, it will be adding credence to the Marxist cartoon of U.S...

...This may not be as true as it once was, given the drama of actual combat in places like El Salvador, but it probably still remains true when it comes to discussions of Latin America's underlying plight-a plight that ultimately provides much of the explanation for the violence that sometimes shows up on the television evening news...

...It would seem that Ambassador Deane R. Hinton's patience, like White's a few years earlier, was wearing to a bluntness he had previously only expressed in private...

...One wonders if this heightened productivity, so admired by Reaganites, is in part the result of the counterinsurgency tactics being taught at Guatemala City's military school by U.S...

...According to their scenario, pure self-interest will save us, and save Latin America at least from the danger of immediate bankruptcy...

...Why did this happen all of a sudden...

...He had just been removed from his post for expressing similar worries in an interview for Managua's La Prensa, an interview the government would not allow published...

...Smaller Latin American countries have burdens just as crushing, given the lesser size of their economies...

...Take the current Latin American debt problem...

...Essentially the big change was the huge increase in the price of oil in 1974...

...Full throttle ahead...

...A genuine solution is not yet in sight...

...Our "secret war" feeds the militarists and totalitarians among them...

...Optimists say that even without such a debtors' union, the United States may agree to vitally neces-sary changes it has long resisted in the rules of the game for international trade and aid...

...We're siding with the "gorillas...

...With unmatched cyni-cism, the government then moves in with medical aid and food for the survivors, the men being organized into' 'civil patrols" under threat of execution on the spot...

...Each day we see the sad reshults Afflict the Sheeretary of State...

...The red ink in the accounts of Latin American countries inscribed on the books of banks in the United States and Europe now totals more than $240 billion...

...Defeat is finally signaled when Washington agrees to a UN resolution that authorizes Communist supervision of the' world's press...

...No "c" is found in George P. Shultz, But editors can't get it shtraight...

...Mexico leads the debtors' pack, but Brazil owes only slightly less than Mexico's $80 billion, and Argentina is next in line with almost $40 billion in foreign debts outstanding...

...Foreign debts are different from internal governmental budget deficits...

...Wearing civilian dress, soldiers then raid the area, indiscriminantly slaughtering men, women, and children, some five or six thousand since July...

...Not only would El Salvador get its body-count certification, but Guatemala would get all those helicopter parts - which it's getting anyway - and more, to massacre Indian women and children...

...Clearly the decision has been made at the highest levels that the world's banking system cannot survive a Latin Ameri-can financial collapse...

...Before that Latin American countries were not rich but they were surviving...

...ET CETERA Orthography for '83 There are two "r's" in Mitterrand, But so inaccurate is our glance That often Monsieur Mitterand Is made the Prresident of Frranee...

...Argentina, for one, spent an estimated $6 billion during the past five years on the planes, missiles, and other arms it used in the Falkland Islands war...

...this means that the interest must be paid largely by earnings from trade, tourism, and foreign investments in the borrowing country...

...There are now 500,000 refugees in Guatemala...

...The Argentine government has agreed to heavy spending cuts as a condition for obtaining $2 billion in loans from the I.M.F...

...Foggy Bottom responded with embarrassed silence...

...But the terrible increase in the price of the oil they had to import meant either economic stagnation or heavy borrowing abroad for economic stimulus...

...Latin American economies are responding to the sharp ups and downs of international trade, and until something is done to ease that problem, the prospects are for a Latin America mired deeper and deeper in debt...

...might suspend military aid if the local human rights situation didn't improve...

...in coming to terms with a world-wide eruption of basic human claims...

...Con-gress, and despite the warning from internal critics of the Sandinistas like Ambas-sador Navarro that supporting Somozists is wrong-headed...

...cuts that are sure to be unpopular at home and which may lead to severe political unrest inside Argentina...

...Where was governmental or bank oversight when this kind of spending was going on...

...If Congress goes along with Mr...

...They managed to stay reasonably solvent, depend-ing on bilateral aid from the U.S...

...There on the front pages, December 21, was Nicaraguan Ambassador to Washington Francisco Fial-los Navarro lamenting that his country was being threatened by a "leftist dictatorship...

...The "twice-born" General Rios Montt has proved, in a short time, far more effective than his predecessor, Romeo Lucas Garcia, in stopping the insurgent advance...

...And among the rebels themselves there are certainly many who fight as much under the banner of Aquinas's justification of rebellion against tyranny as under the Marxist flag...

...banks alone have more than $61 billion at stake...

...and that ain't land-reform...

...As a result, Stein fantasizes, "The Wall Street Journal and Commentary magazine were closed...

...The Sandinistas surely, who with the excep-tion of Costa Rica and despite their one-party tendencies, still have the best human rights record in the region...

...Only your corner banker can tell you just how many such loans he is carrying on his books, and the effect on the American economy of a possible widespread default does not bear thinking about...

...While on his Latin American trip, President Reagan pledged that the United States would provide $1.2 billion in emergency short-term loans to Brazil, and he appealed to lenders around the world to help Brazil and other debtor countries through their financial crisis...

...Many other nations were not so wise, however, and neither the banks nor the U.S...

...Further, presuming Russia's unwillingness to float the economies of Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador - which is a safe bet - there are almost insuperable economic pressures which demand that any socialist-leaning states in the area would have to accommodate themselves to their superpower northern neighbor...

...The International Monetary Fund has asked commercial banks to lend Mexico up to $6.5 billion in fresh credits over the next thirteen months...

...And the worst-kept secret war against Sandinistas in Nicaragua will apparently continue - despite explicit orders from the U.S...

...Placing himself sometime in the future, Stein imagines an underarmed America bowing to Soviet threats...

...Given the worldwide economic reces-sion with its fall-off in all these money-making items, foreign debts have emerged during the past year as a hot domestic political issue in almost every Latin American country, mak-ing many already volatile political situations potentially explo-sive...

...According to tradi-tional wisdom, the mere mention of Latin American problems is enough to bring a quick glaze over the average reader's eyes...

...the gorillas of this mafia," no less than the guerrillas in the mountains, "are destroying El Salvador...

...One catch to this kind of borrowing is that such loans are received in foreign currency such as dollars...

...Clearly, big trouble could be in the offing...

...Reagan has set us against this tide, and by means which instruct our adversaries that brute force wins the day...

...The Carter human rights foreign pol-icy was a beginning for the U.S...

...banks which were bulging with petrodollars from the oil-rich sheiks...

...As - even without major military aid from us - it's been winning, if you do not blink the cost in human life, in Guatemala...

...A "bad rap...

...Last month, former GOP economics adviser Herbert Stein explained in the Wall Street Journal "How World War III Was Lost...

...Belying George Shultz's softer rhetoric, the fact is that U. S. policy toward Central America is in charge of old Cambodia hands like Thomas O. Enders and our ambassador to Honduras, John D. Negroponte - who aim to make a point they failed to prove in Southeast Asia: fire power wins...

...The Athenians once thought so too...

...Hinton, must be stopped...

...For one good reason, they argue: your friendly neighborhood banker can easily write off your Visa Card account if necessary...

...The London Economist, which so far has supported Mr...

...Probably more extreme than the Sandinistas...

...Some of the loans were used for genuinely fruitful schemes...

...Brazil, for example, invested much of its borrowed money in facilities that will pay off in the long run in increased national productivity...

...And last November White's successor as ambassador to El Salvador must have felt the ground shake a bit beneath his feet when he warned a group of top military officials and businessmen that the U.S...

...Reagan's early De-cember trip smiled over the roughage - and, reaching for a new height of conflict-ing signals, embraced Guatemala's brutally efficient General Efrain Rios Montt...

...Still...

...As for the insurgents in El Salvador and Guatemala, we hardly know who they are...

...D'Aubisson...

...Indian villages supporting the rebels are targeted...

...In sum, the Latin American countries have more than tripled their foreign debts in the past six years, and the region's indebtedness now represents well over half the foreign debt outstanding in the world...

...DEBTOR'S PRISON Americans will do anything for Latin America, one jour-nalistic pundit said, except read about it...

...Most nations chose the latter course, egged on by U.S...

...and private investment to expand underdeveloped economies...

...Robert E. White learned as much when he questioned the direction of Washington's thinking about El Salvador...

...But such band-aid rescue operations cannot conceal the fact that the growth rate of Latin American countries that reached almost 6 percent a year over the last decade has plunged to 1.6 percent this year and that trade deficits are still growing at an alarming rate...

...What then...

...The largest part of this money is due not to governments but to private investors, and U.S...

...That's right, billion...

...then Mr...

...All of which is an argument for negotiation and political solutions to the inevitable social revolution which, as in East-ern Europe, fire power can only repeatedly repress, never permanently extinguish...

...Some economists and political leaders in Latin America are calling for the formation of a debtors' union among Latin American countries with heavy foreign debts...

...Which doesn't mean the guerrillas are necessarily nice people...

...The ambassador's concerns are ones we share, and ones we wish were taken more seriously by Nicaragua's enthusiastic supporters here...

...The "mafia of the right," said Mr...